DPLA Press Roundup: November 15 – December 15

Digital Public Library of America: Young but Well Connected

“This past spring, after years of hopeful talk, the idea of a U.S. national digital library took the leap into reality. The early signs are promising. After only seven months, the Digital Public Library of America, or DPLA, serves as the central link in an expanding network of cultural institutions that want to make their holdings more visible to the public. It has attracted financial support from foundations and government agencies, among them the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and, mostly recently, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. And it’s begun to attract not only users in search of far-flung information but also developers who want to build new tools and applications on its open-source platform. But its small staff also has a lot of work to do before the digital library fully realizes the vision that brought it to life.”

DPLA included in MaximumPC’s 57 Fascinating Websites

“If you have some time to kill and want to upgrade your internal knowledge bank, the Digital Public Library of America is a great place to start. It has over 2.5 million items from libraries, archives, and museums, and unless you happen to be Ben Stein, it’s nigh impossible to spend a few minutes clicking through articles without emerging at least slightly more knowledgeable than when you started.”

DPLA: Introduction to the Digital Public Library of America

“I’ve blogged before about the relatively new Digital Public Library of America (here’s a post introducing the DPLA and here’s one on historical maps you’ll find there). Now the Library of Congress has posted a31-minute webcast that features the DPLA content director, Emily Gore. She not only demonstrates some great examples of what you can find in the public portal of the DPLA, but also discusses the potential for gathering even more materials (she gives an example using local sources.) It’s a great introduction to the site, and Gore answers some questions from the audience that seem to be on a lot of people’s minds.”

Google Isn’t The Only Way to Research

“The fast-growing Digital Public Library of America aims to make accessible the holdings of every library, historical society, and other repository of information. Not just text but photos and other resources for research flow through this aggregator of sites. The DPLA regularizes the metadata so anyone can search through vast troves of specialized material. Want to find where your great-grandmother lived in rural Minnesota? This is how you may do it.”

An update on the Digital Public Library of America

“This week in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Jennifer Howard writes about how the Digital Public Library of America has been doing since its launch seven months ago. One highlight is that it has attracted a lot of major donors, including the Gates Foundation and theNEA. The DPLA has also helped connect users to smaller more local and regional institutions like the Minnesota Digital Library and the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, who have seen a substantial increase in traffic.”

Digital Collections and the Digital Public Library of America

“Institutions contribute metadata and thumbnails of their materials to the DPLA, but the actual item remains with the institution. In other words, you can do a search in the DPLA on a topic, let’s stay with “moonshine” for this example, and from that you might get a list of things like photographs, government reports, stories, songs, and eventually our court transcripts related to moonshine cases. But to actually read those transcripts, you’ll need to click on the link which will take you back to the North Carolina Digital Collection where the full digital copies of the items live. So the DPLA offers yet another means for people in North Carolina, across the country, and internationally to discover materials from the State Archives and the State Library. That’s something we’re pretty excited about.”

Europeana celebrates 5 years and 30 million objects

“Over the past five years, Europeana has become a driving force in the world of digital cultural heritage. The Europeana model was adopted by the Digital Public Library of America, and the organisation has become a global leader in areas such as open access. In 2012, Europeana created a watershed moment in open access when it released its entire dataset, 20 million items at the time, under a CC0 dedication, making all of its metadata freely available for use by all and reinforcing the importance of public domain for creativity.”

A Quick Look at the Growth of Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Content Since April 2013

“We can’t say enough good things about the DPLA E-Book Bookshelf tool that launched in October. This resource has been a real crowd pleaser when we’ve discussed and demoed it during recent presentations. The source code is open and a web-based version of the tech is also available to help organize your own materials.”